The Reporter is rising above the political polarization of Taiwan media, split down pro-China and pro-Taiwan lines, to produce award-winning investigations.

A version of this story first appeared on the Global Investigative Journalism Network. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

With trust and interest in journalism declining among millennials around the globe, Taiwan’s Reporter is taking a gamble. Their mission: re-engage the younger generation with in-depth journalism.

Launched in September 2015, The Reporter stood out among other non-profit media organizations in Taiwan as the first of its kind to be funded by a public foundation. It receives an annual US$900,000 to $950,000 personal donation for the first three years from the co-founder and chairman of Pegatron Corporation, philanthropist TH Tung, to The Reporter Cultural Foundation, which at the same time depends on other donations to help maintain newsroom operations.

Reviving quality journalism

For decades, Taiwan’s journalism was politically polarized, split between pro-China and pro-Taiwan factions. Financial constraints and rapidly shifting technologies, plus growing political influence from the Communist Party of China across the Strait, posed new challenges in what was an already divided and vulnerable journalism environment.

Sherry Lee, editorial managing director of The Reporter, has been a journalist for nearly 18 years — three years as a photojournalist and the rest spent doing in-depth reporting. In 2010, she was a correspondent in Beijing for Taiwan’s respected business magazine Commonwealth. When she returned to Taiwan two years later, she saw opportunities for open public discussion in Taiwan as compared to Beijing, regardless of the many challenges.

Her initial idea continues to drive The Reporter’s goal: to bring professionalism back to Taiwan’s journalism and “refocus on public discourse”—a reaction to the legacy of political polarization.

What echoes in the views of both Lee and Lin is that, amid the difficult media conditions, there’s a yearning for a revival of quality journalism. And The Reporter is taking on the job.

“We need to create a type of media culture that is best suited to this new era,” says Lee. And that means using innovative digital storytelling underscored by solid, on-the-ground reporting.

The Reporter’s award-winning investigation on labor trafficking in Taiwan’s fishing industry is the latest example of its expanding possibilities.

Experimenting with formats

The journalists began their eight-month investigation by looking into the mysterious death of an Indonesian worker known as “Supriyanto” on a Taiwan fishing boat. From the team’s initial reporting, they discovered a larger, systematic and cross-border human trafficking issue.

The investigation included a “reporter’s notebook” which detailed the team’s investigative process, a graphic illustrating Taiwan’s deep-sea fishing industry, and an interactive, multimedia journey tracking Indonesian workers from their homeland to Taiwan. Supriyanto is featured in a first-person narrative video, in which the reporters creatively used video clips secretly filmed by one of Supriyanto’s co-workers that reveal how the migrant fisherman was abused and severely injured by crew members before his death.

While the reporters wanted to connect with readers, Lee says they purposely avoided sensationalizing the story and aimed instead for depth in the storytelling.

After months of chasing after the victim’s story, Lee reconnected with Tempo reporter Philipus Parera, with whom she exchanged ideas on the story at the Asian Investigative Journalism Conference last year, in order to trace the origin of the crime. Eventually, two Taiwanese reporters were sent to work with the Tempo team in Indonesia.

In the end, The Reporter put an eight-person team on the project, including designers and coders who built the multimedia and interactive website.

Part ofitsstrategy is to cultivate younger reporters by providing consistent guidance and training both inside and outside the newsroom.

A team of 15 journalists work at the publication in Taiwan — including four editors and three photojournalists — with the majority of staff ranging between 25 and 30. The editors also work with dozens of freelancers.

“We enjoy a non-hierarchical, open and sharing organizational culture, which is not often existent in traditional newsrooms,” says Lee.

There is also a constant review of practices to help “consolidate and revise.” For example, from the collaborative investigation with Tempo, they established a project manager system.

“When there’s a big investigative project,” says Lee, “the project manager will be responsible for leading the investigation to ensure a consistent style, supervise the whole process and finally decide on how the story should be presented.”

Reaching readers, finding funds

In order to reach readers outside of cyberspace, The Reporter has also published two print books. Released in December 2016, the first publication was a collection of behind-the-scenes stories of its investigation with Tempo.

In February, the group published an illustrated storybook for children, Transparent Kids: Stories of Stateless Migrant Children. It originated from a report on children “without nationality” — the children of migrant workers born in Taiwan but deprived of basic rights in education, healthcare and other social support due to their parents’ legal status.

As part of its sharing culture as well as its obligations as a non-profit, The Reporter hosts various events, including film screenings, investigative journalism workshops, public lectures and dialogues, and its editors appear regularly on local radio shows to share behind-the-scenes stories of their reports.

The Reporter currently sustains its work through fundraising and is working to further develop its membership program. Readers can choose to make a single or regular donation, which comes with optional gifts, such as its printed books.

Lee says The Reporter has over 400 regular individual donors. Since the publication of its investigative series on fishing industry abuses, it is also attracting about $200,000 in annual donations from small and medium-sized business owners and ordinary individuals combined, an achievement in a culture where much philanthropy is typically directed at religious temples.

“We are more certain that good reporting can drive the public’s confidence in us,” she says.

For additional revenue, The Reporter organizes workshops and training projects with local universities.

Without a marketing team, its board members assist in fundraising through personal networks. This is not an easy task and takes a lot of effort, says Lee. But, for her, it all comes back to good journalism.

Siran Liang is GIJN’s Chinese editor. She has a master’s in journalism and media studies from the University of Hong Kong. She interned for the Nepali Times, where she covered the country’s reconstruction after the 2015 earthquake, as well as the blockade by India during that time.